MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH

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Media needs a reporting standard for prophets and plain guessers

When I started my media English watch in June of 2009, I aimed to track and critique only major flaws in the English grammar and usage of the four major Metro Manila broadsheets. I decided that I wouldn’t bother with the factual content, quality of reportage, and style of their news reports, feature stories, and commentaries. I knew that if I did, I would just be biting more than I can chew and might not be able to give justice to the added task. So until now, I have limited myself to just ferreting out the problematic or questionable English in the major stories of the four major broadsheets. I have been doing this for a two-fold purpose, of course—for the reporters and editors to know their grammar and usage mistakes so they can avoid them the next time around, and for Forum members to improve their English by becoming aware of such mistakes so they can avoid them in their own writing.

There have been times, though, when I felt that some newspaper writers and editors were purveying not only of bad English but unjournalistic and unwarranted news reporting as well, but I have always managed to refrain from commenting on them. Yesterday (April 22), however, the limits of my tolerance were breached by an election-related news story in one of the broadsheets. That story not only seriously bungled its semantics but, to my mind, also went beyond the limits of good thinking and sensible journalism.

Here are the first five paragraphs of that news story:

Philippine Daily Inquirer: Giving credence to a soothsayer’s thought process

Before going into the merits of this news story as a piece of journalism, I would like to call attention first to the seriously flawed semantics of its second paragraph:

“The charismatic televangelist, who claims a following of 6 million here and abroad, said it could be an ominous sign of a failure of elections amid fears that the country’s first nationwide balloting will be carried out in a peaceful and fair manner.”

If the reporter had paraphrased Pastor Apollo Quiboloy properly and accurately, it would appear that in the pastor’s mind, what’s to be feared is “that the country’s first nationwide balloting will be carried out in a peaceful and fair manner” and not the other way around. I have a feeling that even if Pastor Quiboloy’s prophecy is of doubtful probative value, he couldn’t possibly have a mindset so contrary to good sense and public order. I therefore suspect that it was either the reporter’s or deskperson’s fault that the negative aspect of the “that”-clause in that statement was obliterated, perhaps as a proofreading error. In any case, for that sentence to make sense, it should read with a “not” before the phrase “be carried out,” as follows:

“The charismatic televangelist, who claims a following of 6 million here and abroad, said it could be an ominous sign of a failure of elections amid fears that the country’s first nationwide balloting will not be carried out in a peaceful and fair manner.”

But I must hasten to add that it’s not only with that semantically flawed sentence that I am taking issue with that news story. I think the bigger and more serious issue is this: Are such nebulous, unverifiable, and alarmist claims by self-professed soothsayers about the Philippine national elections legitimate news? It’s understandable that gullible people under the spell of soothsayers would fall for such predictions out of religious fanaticism, but must newspaper reporters and editors also fall for those supernatural claims and lend credence to them by treating them as legitimate news?

If media will give weight to just anybody’s ramblings and supernatural visions about future events in our national life, where then do we draw the line between truth and superstition? By what measure of journalism will someone’s sleeplessness, blurred vision, and seeing only “clouds” instead of “a clear vision of the chosen one” be deemed credible and newsworthy? By what measure of journalism will someone’s claim of having been given “a revelation from the Father” be of greater probative value and news value than another’s claim of the same thing? And by what measure should journalism deem a religious leader or soothsayer really prophetic or simply a plain guesser?

I submit that it’s wrongheaded for a mainstream newspaper to give credence to such soothsayers and their predictions by reporting them down to the most frivolous, trifling, and vacuous details. This kind of journalism that treats tall, unsubstantiated claims as fact will only abet irrational thinking and superstition among the populace. More than that, it will create an atmosphere of bad thinking and public disorder during the national elections—a critical time in our national life when sobriety and rational behavior are most needed.

SHORT TAKES IN MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH:

(1) Manila Daily Bulletin: Awkward phrasing, improper punctuation

In the first sentence of the news story, the phrase “to the increasing cost and harmful effects to the environment of fossil fuel” reads disjointedly because of the awkward compounding of the attributes of “increasing cost” and “harmful effects to the environment” of fossil fuel. This phrase “to the environment” messes up the parallelism between the two attributes. A better, clearer phrasing to achieve this parallelism is this: “the increasing cost of fossil fuel and its harmful effects to the environment.”

The second sentence is difficult to read and comprehend because of misplaced punctuation and improper punctuation. The comma after “in UP-Diliman” is uncalled for, but a comma is absolutely needed after the phrase “the production of oil” to set off the predicate of the sentences from the parenthetical before it.

Here’s a revision of the passage that fixes these two grammatical problems and fine-tunes the statement further:

“To produce cheaper oil as a solution to the increasing cost of fossil fuel and its harmful effects on the environment, an 18-year-old student from the University of the Philippines (UP) has developed a technology that uses recycled plastic to harvest algae for oil production.

“The project plan of Janella Mae Salamania, an Applied Physics student in UP-Diliman, is entitled “Oilgae Harvesting Using Plastics” and deals with a cheaper method of growing and harvesting algae for the production of oil. The plan has caught the attention of the Finnish government.”

(2) Manila Daily Bulletin: Use of wrong preposition

The use of the prepositional phrase “resulting to + object of the preposition” is a very common grammatical error in newspaper journalism. The correct form is “resulting in + object of the preposition.”

So here’s that grammatically flawed lead sentence as corrected:

“The Cebu City Police Office finally filed charges for reckless imprudence resulting in homicide against eight defendants two weeks after five construction workers were killed when the firewall of a mall they were working on collapsed.”

(3) The Manila Times: Misuse of a transitive verb

The verb “assured” is misused in the first sentence of the lead statement above. “Assure” is a transitive verb, so it needs a direct object to work properly in a sentence. This problem can be fixed by using, say, the word “public” as the direct object. The sentence will then read as follows:

“The Palace, along with the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and Philippine National Police (PNP), on Wednesday assured the public that the situation in Basilan is now under control following intensified military campaign against the perpetrators of the recent bombing attack that killed 12 people.”

An alternative construction that doesn’t require a direct object is to nominalize the verb “assure” as “assurance,” then to use the verb phrase “gave assurance” instead, as follows:

“The Palace, along with the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and Philippine National Police (PNP), on Wednesday gave assurance that the situation in Basilan is now under control following intensified military campaign against the perpetrators of the recent bombing attack that killed 12 people.”

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